e
incident in his military career which forms the subject of these pages.

First however--the camouflage tree. It is only meet that the material
and sordid details of the stage properties should be given, before
branching into any discussion of the capabilities of the actor. The
phrase, then, does not imply--as the ignorant might possibly be led to
believe--a new type of tree. It does not grow in the tropics amongst a
riotous tangle of pungent undergrowth; it does not creak sadly in the
north wind on the open hill. It shelters not the hibiscus anthropoid,
it gives not lodging to the two-tailed newt. From a botanical point of
view, the tree is a complete and utter frost. It is, in point of hard
and bitter fact, not a tree at all.

"Camouflage" is that which conceals: it is a fraud, and speaketh not
the truth. I am not even certain whether it is a noun or a
preposition, but the point is immaterial. Along with other canons of
military matters, its virtue lies in its application rather than in its
etymology. What the eye doth not see the trench mortars do not trouble
is as true to-day as when Noah first mentioned the fact; and camouflage
is the application of this mighty dictum.

The value of any particular piece of camouflage depends entirely on its
capability for deceit; but to the youthful enthusiast I would speak a
word of warning. I have in mind the particular case of young Angus
MacTaggart, a lad from Glasgow, with freckles and a sunny disposition.
He was a sapper by trade, and on his shoulders there devolved, on one
occasion, the job of covering a trench mortar emplacement with a
camouflage of wire and grass which would screen the hole in which sat
the mortar from the prying gaze of Hun aeroplanes. It was a deep hole,
for the mortar was large; and the screen of wire was fastened to a
framework of wood. When the gun wished to do its morning hate, a
pessimistic individual first scoured the heavens with his glasses in
search of Hun planes. If the scouring revealed nothing, the screen was
lowered, and the gun was made ready. Then the detachment faded away,
and the gun was fired by a man of great personal bravery by means of a
long string. Ever since the first trench mortars, which consisted of a
piece of piping down which a jam-tin bomb was dropped, in the hopes
that when the charge at the bottom was lighted, the bomb would again
emerge, I have regarded trench mortars as dangerous and unpleasant
objects